I've been SO absent from DA, and I don't exactly know why.  

I love DA, I love the people here and my groups here, and keeping up with my friends' art, and... well, it's probably due to my own lack of art-making that I've vanished.  Not that I don't want to see everyone else's gorgeous creations, but I feel sad and wistful over how long I've gone without making anything, and that makes me avoid paying attention to art, I think.  

Also, my schedule this year just sucks.  I feel like I have no time to do anything other than teach, and plan lessons for more teaching, and grade papers and write tests and assignments.  Or else I'm commuting, and listening to music or trying to write or think of plots, but it just eats my brain.  I did word puzzles last week, but the sheer amount of time I'm commuting means that in two days, I was already bored with crostics, anagrams, crosswords, and I'm almost-but-not-quite bored with cryptograms.  I'm sick of riding the train and bus so much, and sick of not having a regular sleep schedule because I work super-early some days and late on others.  There isn't enough light in my bedroom, there's too much noise from the inner courtyard, the pollution bothers me, my skin is reacting to it by getting both pimply and dry and scaly, my back and shoulders always hurt, my sinus problems aren't better, and I'm exhausted.  

/whiny rant.

So, I just worked for the past week at a summer camp in Avila (it was a week-long language immersion camp with a school, so the camp director could decide if she wanted to hire me for July).  And that snapped me out of it.  In those 6 days in the countryside, with a regular schedule, lots of sunlight, students that were smart and engaged and friendly and actually wanted to learn, playing games, singing songs, riding horses, I woke up.  I can see much more clearly how my environment here is affecting my creativity, and I've got to make some changes as soon as I can.  I don't know that there's any hope for my schedule this school year, but next fall, I'm going to be very serious about which classes I accept, and about less commuting, regular free time, and regular bedtime.  I can't spend so much time on students who don't even care about learning.  I can't relax and accomplish anything creative when I'm on the bus/train/metro all day.  I can't *want* anything if I'm too stressed and tired and constantly-busy to enjoy life.  I've gone for months without wanting to draw, write, paint, or sew, and all it took was slightly less than a week at camp to start those impulses stirring again.  

I do hope that I have some art to post soon, art I made because I actually felt like it again.